From the glory days of the Frat Pack in the first half of the last decade, to the unstoppable reign of Judd Apatow and his crew in recent years, comedies about groups of funny dudes getting together and performing some sort of task have been all the rage. Every year we get at least a half dozen of them, and sometimes they’re funny, like Old School and Anchorman, and sometimes they end up bad, like Hall Pass and this film. At first glance one might think that the difference maker between a failed ensemble guy comedy and a successful one is the inclusion of Will Ferrell, but the better bet is that the good ones started off with a strong script, the foundation of any good film. Getting a group of funny guys together to riff can enhance material and even create some once in a lifetime comedic gold, but it doesn’t work miracles. It’s true that The Watch has some funny moments, and it has assembled a talented cast, but the film fails as a whole because not enough of its jokes hit. It’s random and rambling, and honestly it feels like a bunch of guys casually getting together and making half-hearted attempts at salvaging crap.
The basic story is that Ben Stiller is an uptight, overbearing Costco manager. He runs a tight ship, keeps a close eye on all of his employees, and is so dedicated to being in charge of things that he’s started several clubs in his community (most prominently a running club: lunch has been cancelled due to lack of hustle). So when the guy who works at his store as the night watchman is mysteriously and brutally killed while on duty, of course this control freak takes it upon himself to solve the murder. And, due to his history with starting clubs, that means creating a neighborhood watch. The only problem is the three guys who show up to join the watch (Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn, and Richard Ayoade) are kind of imbeciles, and the threat they’re hunting down proves to be much more formidable and extraterrestrial than they initially imagined.
The good news about The Watch is that most of the alien-battling hijinx are fun to watch, if not legitimately harrowing. The 80s were a golden age of movies that mixed comedy with sci-fi based action elements, and the way this film presents its riffs alongside battles with slimy invaders made it feel like something of a throwback to the glory days of my childhood. Fish-out-of-water humor, dimwits in over their heads, and the mundane being presented with mock-heroic importance are all tried and true methods of creating comedic situations, and The Watch utilizes each when it throws its three knuckleheads up against the hidden cabal of intruders that have disguised themselves as humans and infiltrated their community.
Unfortunately, mock-heroic adventure isn’t the focus of this film’s humor. Instead, the bulk of the gags comes from vulgar riffing and raunchy sex talk. There was a depressing amount of silence in the theater when I saw this film, in places where there should have been laughter, and it seemed like the lack of connection with the audience was coming from the desperation of the jokes. Stiller and crew just kept riffing and riffing, mostly relying on references to penises and explicit sex acts, and it felt like a scraping of the bottom of the barrel for the easiest laughs possible. More often than not I was left wondering whether the takes we were seeing were really the best ones that got filmed, because there was a noticeable dearth of wit on display, and the foursome that make up this film’s protagonists have historically been far from witless.
Instead of crafted gags, what we watch is endless dialogue scenes filled with what feels like random silliness. The best humor comes from character. You establish the characters in your film as different sorts of people, throw them in a room together, and then humor will naturally spring from the clashing of their personalities. The Watch doesn’t take advantage of this because it doesn’t establish strong characters. Instead of the four main actors playing four different types, they’re mostly all just playing four improv comedians hanging out in a room together, and their dialogue naturally degenerates into four guys all trying to yell quips over the others. Sure, some of their comments elicit laughter, but not nearly often enough, and a clever turn of phrase or a shocking statement doesn’t necessarily make for the most satisfying kind of comedy.
If there’s one character that actually does have an established personality, it’s Stiller’s. But, in this case, people are likely going to be turned off just because of who is playing the character. The big complaint that has been thrown at Stiller throughout his entire career is that he’s a one-note comedian who always plays the same role. And while he’s proven that wrong and shown off his range on more than one occasion, here he’s playing that exact same tightly wound, high strung character that people complain about, and it feels pretty stale. At this point the guy has to be a millionaire more times over than even he’s aware of, so one has to wonder why he keeps taking easy roles that are less than interesting. It would seem like, at this point, continuing his career would be more about crafting a legacy.
As stale as Stiller’s performance is, however, it almost feels fresh compared to what Vince Vaughn is doing. I would hesitate to even try to explain who his character is, because he’s clearly just, once again, playing Vince Vaughn. That can be fun if he’s got a good straight man to play off of (Jon Favreau is still Vaughn’s best foil), but in a movie where everyone else is also being motor-mouthed, crude, and sarcastic, Vaughn blends into the cacophony of riffing and feels like a wasted asset. He gets a subplot where he’s trying to get a handle on a teenage daughter who’s beginning to blossom into womanhood, but the storyline does little to deepen or develop the character, and seems to only exist as a comedic exercise that asks the question, “What would it be like if Vince Vaughn was your dad?” Well, it turns out it would be like having a dad that talks really fast.
The biggest effort in crafting a unique character was made with Jonah Hill. He’s playing an unhinged, weapon hoarding militia type who was rejected from joining the police force because their psych screening revealed him to be a nut job. Or, at least, that’s what he’s playing for the first ten minutes he’s on screen. For the rest of the movie he’s just playing Jonah Hill sitting around, drinking beers, and making wiener jokes. If there originally was a script that tried to tell a real story and create real characters, it seems like it didn’t take long before it was thrown out the window.
Richard Ayoade is stupendously charming and probably ends up stealing the film out from under everyone else, but that may just be because he’s the cast member who’s been least overexposed to American audiences. Like all of the others, he’s doing little more than relying on his established comedic persona of being kind of nerdy and impossibly British, so it’s hard to imagine what his character originally looked like when it was on the page. Was this role written for Ayoade, or at least written for somebody British, or was the idea just that there would be a fourth member of the gang, and he would act like whatever actor got cast? Once again, it felt like the latter.
Are there worse movies you’re going to see this year than The Watch? Yes, definitely. It’s not an atrocity or a terrible time at the movies or anything. But it needed a lot more work if it was ever going to become something worth spending your time and money on. It needed a more compelling story, better realized characters, and crafted gags that didn’t feel like they were the results of a group of guys sitting around and spitballing ideas. The bulk of this film is random silliness, and that should be the seasoning on top of your dish, not the main course. You’re definitely going to see worse movies than The Watch this year, but you might not end up seeing anything as forgettable. Thank heavens I took some notes while in the theater, or writing a review would have been a challenge indeed. Just 24 hours after having seen the film, and I’m already having trouble remembering anything about it.
